


Completion

by stardropdream



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 10:42:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first few months of their absence is the hardest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Completion

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ March 30, 2012.

  
  
  
The first few months are the worst of it, the readjustment period. There’s something painful in knowing that it’s only been a short time at home, only a short amount of time for everyone else, but for her it’s been years—frozen in place, watching everything unfold, a life she has memories of but she can lay no claim to. Syaoran would have understood the feeling, but he’s not here. She misses him, of course.   
  
She misses the others, too. Kurogane, Fay, Mokona… but it is a self-conscious kind of missing. Her memories of them belong to another Sakura, memories that live inside her for now, until she can return them. She feels strange saying she knows them. But saying she doesn’t know them would only be a lie, a cruel one, because who does she know better than those travelers? It’s strange, though, to know them when they, in the end, do not know _her_. Sometimes it’s too upsetting to think about. Other times she longs for them to return, so that they can know her.   
  
She spends the first few days after they leave waiting for the night, hoping she’ll have a dream, some kind of glimmer, of where they are and if they’re doing well. She never gets a bad feeling in the base of her gut when she thinks of them, so she believes they are well and unharmed. That is all she can do while they’re gone. But it’s _something_ , and it’s something powerful.   
  
Still, it is a strange adjustment. Life continues as it had before, but she feels as if everything has changed. Her family watches her, expressions sympathetic, when they think she can’t see. Touya’s teasing seems gentler than it usually is, and he hasn’t yet mentioned his dislike of Syaoran—a true rarity. Although she hates it when he acts like a jerk and hates the long litany of teasing she experienced in the past, its absence doesn’t sit well with her, either.   
  
Things seem incomplete, haphazard, frozen in place yet again.   
  
Her mother and father seem to understand, though. They give her space when she needs it. And other times they sit and listen as she tells them of the worlds she saw through the other Sakura’s eyes, the memories of her other self, housed away inside her. She likes to imagine what worlds they’ll see first—if today they are in Kurogane’s country, or Piffle, or Hanshin. Maybe today they’re visiting Fairy Park in Edonis. Her parents smile at her, warm and comforting, as she imagines their roadmap.   
  
Things do get better. Things fall into a routine. She is able to smile without a twinge of sadness. She knows she can’t stay sad—knows that it would only worry them, when they return, if she is unhappy. So she finds her happiness in the everyday. Apples, long walks to their precious places, being the one to tease Touya instead, flowers in spring. The days pass, and she can say, truthfully, that she is happy.   
  
She doesn’t regret being unable to go with them. Not really. Of course she wishes to see them all, to travel with them and share the memories. But her magic is too strong, too easy to manipulate the worlds. She understands that.   
  
And besides, she thinks, as, after a year, the sky drops and the travelers reappear, it’s better if Syaoran has someone he can return to.   
  
He’s a little bit taller, she thinks, as she throws her arms around him and he catches her easily. He holds her tight, smiling brightly, and she’s glad for that reassurance, that proof that she’s real and he’s real, solid. That he hasn’t disappeared to a place she can’t reach.   
  
His fingers curling with hers is as easy as breathing, and she marvels at how simple it is. How whole she feels again.  
  
Complete.


End file.
